Spiritual life of princely towns

In the Middle Ages, Christianity was the foundation of the townsfolk’s spiritual life. Church holidays and daily services – matins, liturgy, vespers – were the calendar and clock for urban residents’ lives. Numerous archaeological findings of personal piety items demonstrate that town inhabitants deeply adopted Christian culture, including its morality and symbolism.

Princely towns had many temples, which are known to us from chronicle reports and archaeological research. In Kyiv alone, there were more than 20 churches, in Halych – more than 15, and in Zvenyhorod, there were at least five churches. The entire life of a person was connected with the church: that’s where baptisms, marriages, and funerals took place. Thus, the arrangements of the church interior were given special attention, because it was the space that led a person out of ordinary life onto perspectives of the Heavenly Kingdom. As people were entering the semi-darkness of the holy temple, they seemed to penetrate a ritual mystery. Light was provided by candles on candlesticks and lamps near icons. Above them, a corona lucis with candles was attached to the dome arch, and narrow windows under the dome allowed for additional illumination. The walls of the churches were covered with frescoes and mosaics – a kind of illustrations for the Old and New Testaments, the acts of the apostles and saints.

Among the remarkable findings related to the interior of medieval churches, we have shaped ceramic tiles (square, triangular, and petal-like) decorated with glaze of different colours, which were used to cover the church floors. Ceramic tiles often feature relief images of griffins, sirens, and birds, which are the manifestation of the Byzantine artistic tradition. The churches kept various religious books, which is confirmed by numerous findings of clasps and plates for book covers.

Christian culture is reflected in different spheres of town life. The most numerous examples are pectoral crosses, made of non-ferrous metals (such as bronze and silver), stone (including marble, limestone, and tuff), clay, amber, and wood. Bronze crosses, engolpia (medallions with particles of holy relics and images of Christ, the Holy Mother of God, and different saints on the sides), were worn by church priests and bishops.

There is a number of artefacts which show us a special sphere of religious life – pilgrimages to Eastern or Western holy places. After taking the pilgrimage to the Holy Land, town residents brought pectoral crosses and commemorative medallions. There are unique testimonies from Zvenyhorod inhabitants about the pilgrimage to “the end of the earth,” to the tomb of Saint James on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean (Santiago de Compostela). Such a trip was typically made by representatives of the higher clergy or nobility, wealthy merchants, and urban dwellers. The discovery of shells belonging to the Pilgrim Brotherhood of St. James, also found in other chronicle towns of Kyivan Rus (Peresopnytsia, Iziaslav, Holm), presents a clear tale about the far-reaching travels of representatives of different, but primarily wealthy, families.